Library Category: Auto Accidents

A herniated disc is a spinal injury which can occur in an auto accident.  The discs in your neck and back are like rubbery cushions that sit in between the vertebral bones of your spine.  Doctors often say that the discs are like little jelly donuts – they have a fibrous outside, but are soft on the inside.  When you have a back injury, the fibrous outside can break down and some of the material on the inside will leak out, just like when you squeeze a jelly donut.  When the material on the inside begins to leak out, the disc is said to have a herniation.

Some people will experience little or no pain with a herniation, while others will have a disc where the material irritates nearby nerves and can result in pain, numbness, or weakness into an arm or leg.

SYMPTOMS OF A HERNIATION

There are three key symptoms of a disc herniation:

• Pain in your arms or legs.  A herniated disc in your back is likely to result in pain into your legs.  A herniated disc in your neck will result in pain in your arms.
• Numbness or tingling.  Because of nerve irritation, you may have numbness or tingling in your hands or feet.  A neck herniation can impact the nerves of the hand and a lower back herniation can impact the nerves of the legs and feet.
• Weakness.  Impact on the nerves will result in impact on the surrounding muscles and a herniation can also cause you to stumble or impair your ability to grasp and hold things in your arms.

If you have any of these symptoms after a car accident, you should see a doctor.  Your doctor can start to diagnose spinal injuries by checking your reflexes, muscle strength, walking ability, and ability to feel light touches or pinprick sensations.  If he is concerned about the results of this initial testing, he might order a CT scan or an MRI to get a better picture of your spine.

TREATMENT OF HERNIATED DISCS

Treatment of a herniated disc takes many forms.  You may be prescribed over the counter medication, your pain may resolve during physical therapy, or you may be among people whose herniation does not resolve with conservative treatment and requires surgery.

A disc herniation is a permanent injury, meaning that if it goes untreated, it will not resolve on its own.  Unlike a muscle strain, this is not the sort of injury you can expect to get better with time.  If you have been injured in an auto accident and have the symptoms above, you should see a doctor as soon as possible.

A concussion is a traumatic brain injury that can be caused in a car crash.  If not properly diagnosed, the effects of a concussion can be devastating.  But one of the problems is that a concussion is not easily diagnosed if you do not know what signs and symptoms to look out for.  If you have been injured in an auto accident and have any of the following signs, you need to be evaluated by a doctor as soon as possible:

• Headache
• Loss of consciousness
• Confusion
• Amnesia about the car accident itself
• Dizziness
• Ringing in your ears
• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Slurred speech
• Delayed response to questions
• Fatigue

Other concussion symptoms may not manifest themselves for hours or even days after the car crash.  For example, you might not notice for several days that you are having difficulty sleeping or are more irritable until a few days after the crash.  For purposes of medical diagnosis, it is important to be evaluated by your doctor as soon as you recognize these symptoms.  Some signs of a concussion that might appear days after the car crash are:

• Concentration and memory problems
• Irritability
• Personality changes
• Sensitivity to light
• Sensitivity to noise
• Sleep disturbances
• Taste disorders
• Smell disorders

The Mayo Clinic recommends that if you or your child experience a head injury, you should see a doctor within a day or two, even if you have not received emergency care.  In an auto accident, you can sustained a blow to the head either from the steering wheel, the airbag, or from striking your head against the headrest or window.

You should seek emergency medical attention immediately if you experience:

• Repeated vomiting
• Loss of consciousness longer than 30 seconds
• A headache that gets worse over time
• Changes in physical coordination like stumbling or clumsiness
• Confusion or disorientation

It is possible to sustain a concussion in a motor vehicle crash even if you do not strike your head on anything in the vehicle.  The sudden acceleration and deceleration forces involved in a whiplash-type injury will cause the brain to move around in the head and can cause bleeding in and around the brain or sheering of the brain’s axons.

Concussion Treatment

The most important thing you can do to recover from a concussion is to give your brain a rest. This means limiting activities that require thinking or mental concentration.  Often, your doctor will recommend that you stay out of work or school, limit TV and video games, don’t read or text or use a computer for several days.  As your symptoms resolves, your doctor may release you gradually back to full duties.  It is important to listen to your doctor’s advice with regard to returning to school, work, and exercise.

For a plaintiff to win an auto accident case in the Commonwealth of Virginia, they have to establish four things:

1. That the other driver owed her a duty;
2. That the other driver breached the duty;
3. That the Plaintiff was injured in the case;
4. And that the Plaintiff’s injuries were directly caused by the breach of the duty.

What does all this mean in English?

Duty

Establishing the duty in the motor vehicle case is typically the easiest part. Each driver on the road owes all of other drivers several duties. We are obligated to operate our vehicles in a safe manner. We are obligated to maintain reasonable control over the vehicle. We are required not to drive too fast. We are prohibited from drinking and driving.

Breach of the Duty

Establishing that there was a breach of a duty in a Virginia motor vehicle case can be difficult sometimes. In rear-end cases, it is usually easy to show that the driver in the rear breached one of the duties – that she wasn’t paying full time and attention to the road, that she was looking at her cell phone, that she didn’t apply the brakes in time.

But in other cases, it can be more difficult. For instance, in an intersection accident, both drivers may say that the had the green light. It is incumbent upon the Plaintiff to find witnesses who agree that she had the green light. If the Plaintiff cannot produce independent witnesses who agree with her story, she will lose at trial nine times out of ten. This is why it is important to get a lawyer involved early on in your case – it gives the lawyer time to track down witnesses while their memories of the crash are still fresh.

Injuries & Causation

Most people who are injured in Virginia auto accidents think that this part will be easy. They think, “I was injured, I had to go to the doctor, he diagnosed me and treated me, what could be hard about this part?” But the insurance company might hire a doctor to testify on their behalf to say that you weren’t injured – either because the accident was too small or because you had some prior injury or degenerative condition. At trial, it will be up to a jury to determine whether to believe you and your doctors or whether to believe the insurance company’s doctor about the extent of the injuries.

If you missed time from work following an auto accident in Virginia and either weren’t paid at all or had to use some of your vacation, sick leave or other paid time off as a result of the crash, you may be entitled to compensation for thoses losses. But you might be in for a bit of a wait for the insurance company to properly compensate you.

Do I have a Lost Wages Claim?

Under Virginia law, you are entitled to make a claim for lost wages in a personal injury case if you missed time from work and either did not get paid at all or had to use up some of your leave time. However, insurance companies will sometimes make the argument that because you “did not actually lose any money” and were able to use your sick leave to set-off the time that you spent attending physical therapy, doctors visits or recovering at home, you are not entitled to any money.

Though Virginia law is very clear on this (you are entitled to recovery), if you find yourself fighting with the insurance adjuster over this part of your claim, you might need to get an attorney involved. Remember that insurance adjusters are skilled, highly trained negotiators. They are under no obligation to treat you fairly and they will sometiems misrepresent the law (or, they might not actually know what the law in Virginia is).

What Documents do I Need to Make a Wage Loss Claim?

This can be another sticking point for insurance companies. The fact of the matter is that all you really need in a Virginia courtroom in order to get compensated for lost wages is to tell the Judge how much time you missed from work and what your hourly pay rate is. However, this does not stop insurance companies from requiring all sorts of documentation before they’ll consider your lost wage claim. We’ve seen cases where the insurance company has requested all of the following from an accident victim:

• Paystubs,
• Doctors notes requiring leave,
• Supervisor’s note,
• Previous tax returns, and
• Time cards

The requirement that you overdocument your time off is not really a requirement at all. It’s a tactic by the insurance company to hold on to as much of their money as they can for as long as they can. During the five weeks it might take you to get all this documentation together, the insurance company is still earning interest on the money that you are entitled to.

Rarely do they require all of this documentation from a law firm that gets involved on the part of the injured victim. In some cases, where it’s not clear how many hours a week you worked regularly or what your regular rate of pay is, they might require more documentation than in other cases, but most of the time the insurance company is satisfied with paystubs showing that you used your sick leave. Just another example of insurance companies taking advantage of unrepresented people.

Our personal injury attorneys work on a contingency fee basis. You’ve probably heard slogans like “no fee if no recovery,” or “we don’t get paid unless you get paid,” before. But what you may not know is everything that we do for our clients in order to earn that fee. Here’s a short list:

• Educate and teach clients about personal injury claims.
• Gather all written records and documents that support our client’s claim: including medical records, police reports and employment records.
• Investigate the client’s claim by gathering witness statements, photos, diagrams and physical evidence.
• Read and analyze our client’s auto policy to determine what kind of coverage is available to pay for hospital bills or provide for uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage.
• Educate clients on how to improve their own auto policy’s coverage.
• Meet with client’s doctors in order to fully understand client’s condition.
• Obtain reports from experts that support the client’s claim.
• Analyze all legal issues that might affect the case – like contributory negligence or assumption of the risk
• Analyze cilent’s health insurance policy or government benefits to determine whether any money will be owed back to either entity at the end fo the case.
• Negotiate any health insurance or government liens to maximize client recovery.
• Conduct negotiates with the defense insurance company in an effort to settle the claim without the necessity of litigation or trial.
• Prepare and file a Complaint if we are unable to settle the case.
• Locate the Defendant so that service can be made upon him.
• Prepare written Interrogatories and Requests for Production of Documents to be served on the Defendant (so that we can find out what his version of events is).
• Answer the Interrogatories and Requests for Documents that the Defense sends us.
• Prepare client for her deposition.
• Conduct the depostion of the Defendant.
• Prepare and take the deposition of any Defense doctors.
• Review our own expert’s reports and meet with the expert to prepare his testimony for trial.
• Interview any witnesses that we will call at trial.
• File all necessary legal documents – including witness lists, jury instructions, and motions.
• Try the case.
• Analyze the verdict and research any issues that occured at trial for potential appeals.

The Commonwealth of Virginia recently passed a ban on text messaging and emailing while driving. The first time a cop catches you emailing away on your Blackberry, its a $20 fine. After that, it’s $50 a pop. Plus court costs. A pretty weak deterrent when compared to Maryland’s $500 fine for first-time offenders.

But more importantly than that is how poorly written this law is. Here’s what the statute says:

§ 46.2-1078.1. Use of handheld personal communications devices in certain motor vehicles; exceptions; penalty. A. It shall be unlawful for any person to operate a moving motor vehicle on the highways in the Commonwealth while using any handheld personal communications device to: 1. Manually enter multiple letters or text in the device as a means of communicating with another person; or
2. Read any email or text message transmitted to the device or stored within the device, provided that this prohibition shall not apply to any name or number stored in the device nor to any caller identification information.
B. The provisions of this section shall not apply to:
1. The operator of any emergency vehicle;
2. An operator who is lawfully parked or stopped;
3. The use of factory-installed or aftermarket global positioning systems (GPS) or wireless communications devices used to transmit or receive data as part of a digital dispatch system; or
4. Any person using a handheld personal communications device to report an emergency.
C. No citation for a violation of this section shall be issued unless the officer issuing such citation has cause to stop or arrest the driver of such motor vehicle for the violation of some other provision of this Code or local ordinance relating to the operation, ownership, or maintenance of a motor vehicle or any criminal statute.
D. A violation of any provision of this section shall constitute a traffic infraction punishable, for a first offense, by a fine of $20 and, for a second or subsequent offense, by a fine of $50.

Let’s take a look at a few of the problems here:

First, the officer has to have some other reason to stop you. This isn’t all that hard to come up with – a parking pass hanging from your window, a burned out tail light, or a failure to use your signal can usually be sufficient. Still, if you’re doing everything right and texting, there’s not a thing the officer can do to you.

Second (and more importantly), the way the statute is written there are a whole slew of things you can still do on you Blackberry. Here’s a short list I came up with:

• Write notes to myself;
• Play chess;
• Read the news;
• Surf the web;
• Take pictures of myself.

If you’re really cool and own an iPhone, you can only imagine how long that list would be.

Studies very clearly demonstrate that texting while driving is dangerous. Some studies suggest that it is just as deadly, if not more so, than drinking and driving. So let’s have our legislature step up and draft a clear law that bans doing anything with your cell phone while you’re operating a motor vehicle.